Citation

Stein DK. Signs 1978; 4(2): 253-268.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1978, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

The practice of burning or burying women alive with their deceased husbands, even as an expression of an underlying view of women as property, is not as bizarre and eotic a custom as its identification with Hindu INdia has made it seem. Although Greek visitors to North India wrote accounts of suttee as early as the 4th century B.C., there are accounts of widow sacrifice among Scandinavians, Slavs, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Finns, Maoris, and some American Indians.